Posts

Recently intranet expert Toby Ward of Prescient Digital Media published an interesting whitepaper 'The Social Intranet. Key Factors for Intranet 2.0 Success; Social Intranet Success Matrix'. The whitepaper is based on Toby's expertise in this area and an extensive survey.
I'm not going to summarize the paper. Just go ahead and read it. It's worth your time. I do want to share three interesting points from the study:Intranet 2.0 is cheap. 49% spent less than $10.000 on socializing their intranet. Of course we know social software is relatively cheap. Cultivating it isn't, by the way. But because it's cheap no big investments have to be done to try new media. This is great; you can start right away.The survey showed that just 29% of the organizations rate the tools as good or very good. Hmm, maybe cheap isn't always good...And only 33% of the organizations experimenting with social media and intranet have executive support. This is understandable as soci…

I've been looking around at how companies use blogs. I see several types of blogs:A company blog, sometimes a blog per country (written in the local language)A page with an overview of official company bloggers. Usually these blogs are focused on product or market areas.Some of these companies have several more bloggers, but they are not listed on the official blog page. These bloggers often clearly state they work for a certain company, but 'the musings on my blog are strictly personal'.For some reason I find this strange. Why aren't these blog posts (with disclaimers) also listed on the page with official blogs? I think this has something to do with the old style of 'managing' communication. The official company blogs are basically controlled posts, somewhat different from official press releases (they have comments...!), but still pretty much the same.In this model it would also mean that all our talk about our work and the company we work for with friends …

Prediction Markets have intrigued me for some time now. I've been reading about them in books such as 'The Wisdom of Crowds' and 'We are Smarter than Me' and 'Wikinomics'. The examples they give are inspiring. But still I find the number of examples, also on the Internet, quite limited. And I think I understand why now. I'll explain why below.But first something great happened to me some time ago. For one I joined the 2.0 Adoption Council. Which is a great group of enterprise 2.0 practitioners and enthusiasts. It simply is a group of people in this area that want to learn from each other. And then recently the 2.0 Adoption Council set up a Prediction Market. Ah, this is great, I thought, it would give me the chance to experience a Prediction Markt in practice. So I jumped in!This prediction market was focused on Enterprise 2.0 business and technology. Several statements in this area were put up and the market kicked off.Every participant got $10.000 to…

This is why I love the blogosphere! And it proves the blogging is not (just) for dummies and show-offs. There's some real deep thinking and interesting interaction going on on blogs. Need proof? Read this post by Tim O'Reilly about 'The State of the Internet Operating System'. What a great piece! It gives a very interesting and inspiring overview of what the Internet is now and what it can do. Here are some highlights if you're still nog interested in reading it all:Ask yourself for a moment, what is the operating system of a Google or Bing search? What is the operating system of a mobile phone call? What is the operating system of maps and directions on your phone? What is the operating system of a tweet?Interesting questions, eh?! O'Reilly goes on to take a look at the competing Internet Operating Systems or The Information Operating System. An Information Operating System because:The underlying services accessed by applications today are not just device comp…

Do you have too much to read? I do have that 'problem'. I simply find too many things interesting. And the Web isn't making it easier for me with all these interesting posts, videos, articles popping up in my feedreader and in Twitter. I don't really perceive it as a problem though. I love the fact that all these different sources can be accessed so easily. But I do have to tweak my filter more tightly and take time to read. Another personal strategy is bookmark url's that seem to be interesting (after a quick scan) without reading them. I store them in my social bookmarking tool (Diigo) to read them when I need them. Bookmarking is my social filtering and storing machine. My extended memory. I store stuff that I actually read there (usually with highlights and comments) and stuff that I hope to read (or share) in the future.What is your filtering strategy? Do you bookmark stuff you haven't read?

Recently John Tropea wrote another great post "It's not about knowledge sharing, it's about engagement and context". In his post he pointed to an older article from KMReview (2004) by Nancy Dixon, "Does Your Organization Have an Asking Problem?". It's an interesting read (although I find the approach a bit too structured...). Anywhere, in her post I found some great quotes I'd like to share with you. They don't only apply to organizations, but to you and me as well. Here goes!Knowledge sharing begins with a request, not with a solution. (...)Managers sometimes tell me that people in their organization have a problem with sharing knowledge; but more often than not, people aren't "asking." The organization has an asking problem, not a sharing problem. When people ask, the sharing problem becomes moot.How organizations talk about "asking" is critical. When company officials say to professionals, "Don't be afraid to…